Peoria shares a tight bond with German sister city Friedrichshafen

Those who doubt the impact of sister-city programs should consider Karin Seckinger. More accurately, perhaps, they should consider her photograph album.

The album is more than 30 years old. But the contents still speak to Seckinger, who is from Friedrichshafen, Germany. They also speak to the influence Peoria has had on lives more than 4,500 miles from its Illinois River banks.

Nick Vlahos

Those who doubt the impact of sister-city programs should consider Karin Seckinger.

More accurately, perhaps, they should consider her photograph album.

The album is more than 30 years old. But the contents still speak to Seckinger, who is from Friedrichshafen, Germany.

They also speak to the influence Peoria has had on lives more than 4,500 miles from its Illinois River banks.

In 1976, Friedrichshafen and Peoria became sister cities. Five years later, the 18-year-old Seckinger decided to join other Friedrichshafen teenagers on a youth-exchange visit to Peoria.

"I read an article in the newspaper that there was a student exchange, and I thought, 'Well, this would be a nice idea - to get away from my parents,'" Seckinger said with a laugh.

It appears Seckinger found more on that trip than just freedom from her folks.

Seckinger spoke with a visitor from Peoria one night last month at a restaurant that overlooks the shore of Lake Constance, which separates Friedrichshafen from Austria and Switzerland. Once she opened the photo album, it became July 1981 all over again.

There was Seckinger's airplane ticket (remember those, complete with red carbon paper?) to and from the United States. A ticket stub from the Julia Belle Swain riverboat. Another stub, from Tower Park in Peoria Heights.

There were plenty of photos Seckinger took - of Grandview Drive and Downtown Peoria, pre-Civic Center and pre-Twin Towers. There also was a clipping of a photo the Journal Star took - of Seckinger and three of her fellow travelers, at Wildlife Prairie Park west of town.

"I had a splendid time," Seckinger said. "I really enjoyed it."

The Peoria visitor found it slightly bizarre to see so many familiar images so far from home. But those images helped Seckinger travel far from her home in the southern-German state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

Now a schoolteacher, Seckinger has been all over the U.S. and Europe and to Africa, among other places.

Prior to that first Peoria trip, she had traveled to France, Italy and Spain, but not off the continent. For a European, those journeys aren't much different distance-wise than a Peorian going to Tennessee or Texas, perhaps.

"I became more interested in getting to know countries, people," Seckinger said about the fallout from her Peoria visit. "Meeting the people, getting new friends.

"It was the first time it really opened my mind to the world."

That's part of the point of sister-city relationships, particularly among the young, according to Eric Hoadley. He is president of Friends of Friedrichshafen, a Peoria-based private group dedicated to strengthening the ties.

"So many people think the world is only as big as what they currently know, and people don't go out of their comfort zone," Hoadley said stateside. "What the youth exchange really does is open those horizons so people realize there's so much more to the world than the mall and my circle of friends."

A pair of similar cities

Friedrichshafen has a shopping mall, but that's not what attracts thousands of tourists annually from Germany and beyond.

The city of about 60,000 is a transportation hub, with ferries crossing Lake Constance - "Bodensee" in German - to other domestic points and to Switzerland.

The lake provides a variety of summertime beach and boating options. Much of downtown Friedrichshafen parallels a lakefront promenade that leads to a castle occupied in the 19th century by kings of Wurttemberg.

The Peoria riverfont is not nearly as expansive or majestic. One area in which the cities are sympatico, however, lies in their relationship with their largest corporations; Caterpillar Inc. is to Peoria what Zeppelin GmbH is to Friedrichshafen.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin began to construct airships in the Friedrichshafen area. The modern-day successor to Zeppelin's firm, a Caterpillar dealer, still is a major presence in the city.

Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, which claims to house the world's largest aviation collection, occupies a former railroad station downtown near the ferry docks.

The Cat-Zeppelin connection - in place since the mid-1950s, as has been the U.S. sister-city initiative - helped lead to the Peoria-Friedrichshafen connection.

Caterpillar executives in the 1970s became friendly with Friedrichshafen city officials, according to Peter Gerstmann, the Zeppelin president and CEO. The Peoria mayor then, Richard Carver, also helped forge the bonds.

"There were a few similar things in the cities," Gerstmann said. "The industry in the cities, how they work together.

"It would be good to have an exchange of experience, and exchange of people. And it would start with a partnership city."

Putting a financial value on the Peoria-Friedrichshafen relationship is difficult, Gerstmann indicated. But he said he has no doubt it's been beneficial to all parties involved.

Perhaps more tangible evidence of the value is found in the interpersonal relationships that have developed over the past 37 years. Those have been spurred by Friends of Friedrichshafen and its German counterpart, the Peoria Club of Friedrichshafen.

"I like the people," said Willi Huster, the Peoria Club president and unofficial tour guide for central Illinoisans who visit his city. "Peoria is an interesting city. In Peoria, I have a lot of friends."

'A real good experience'

Huster was an adult by the time the sister-city relationship was formalized. He said he has visited Peoria about a dozen times.

Many of the teenagers who participate in the youth exchange - Peorians visit Germany in even-numbered years, Germans visit Peoria in odd-numbered ones - never have been this far from their native lands. But some of them knew what to expect, thanks to their parents.

Of the 20 or so Friedrichshafen youths who arrived July 24 in Peoria for the three-week exchange, three might be called "legacy" visitors. Their mothers participated in the exchange, apparently the longest-running one in the U.S., when they were teenagers.

"She is very jealous right now, because I'm here and she is not," said 17-year-old Juliane Sauter, whose mom, Lucia, was part of the first exchange, in 1978. "She really likes the USA."

Sauter and some of her cohorts listed the same likes about their trip - visiting Chicago was a major highlight - and also focused on the cuisine.

"She really liked the food," said Momo Ganzer, whose mother, Sandra, visited Peoria in the mid-1980s. "When she was here, we didn't have so much McDonald's and fast food."

Seckinger said her current students share the same perceptions about the U.S. that her generation did. But in some cases, reality might be different.

"They say the cars are big, the houses are big, the streets are big, stuff like that," said Seckinger, the Peoria Club vice president. "You hear the same thing after 30 years. I think it's different if you see it.

"Whatever movie or TV you see, it isn't real. ... If you go there, you can touch it."

At least one of the youths who is visiting Peoria appears to share Seckinger's sentiment about the tactile aspects of this trip.

"I like traveling to foreign countries. It's great," said Ganzer, a 17-year-old female named for the protagonist of a German novel. "I would have regretted it if I didn't go here."

Friends of Friedrichshafen officials said there tend to be more German teens going to the U.S. than vice versa. Part of that might be related to proximity.

It takes about eight hours to fly from Chicago to Germany. In that same time span, a German can visit four or five countries and cultures by automobile or train, so such exchanges are more common, Hoadley suggested.

But if the distance factor can be overcome, the benefits can be eternal.

"They find out that the people from Friedrichshafen, Germany, or anywhere else they travel to are a lot like us," Hoadley said. "There are cultural differences, but there are so many things that make us all the same. That's reassuring, and it gives those people even more reasons to explore."

Just like Karin Seckinger, who once worked for the Friedrichshafen mayor's office and has been to Peoria six times.

"I tell everybody, 'Do it if you have the chance,'" she said. "Because this is so much for the rest of your life. I still have my pictures and my memories from that time."